Richard Osman talks to Lee Child: So I love having a book where the empaths outwit the psychopaths.

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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/sep/14/i-wanted-to-write-a-suburban-reacher-richard-osman-talks-to-lee-child-about-class-success-and-the-secret-to-great-writing

‘I wanted to write a suburban Reacher’: Richard Osman talks to Lee Child about class, success and the secret to great crime writing
The two bestselling authors who both started in TV discuss writing as a second career, natural justice – and what they really think of literary fiction

Alex Clark
Sat 14 Sep 2024 05.00 EDT

In the four years since Richard Osman published his first Thursday Murder Club novel he has consistently topped the bestseller lists, and now his quartet of retirement-age detectives will be portrayed on screen by a cast including Helen Mirren and Pierce Brosnan. Having grown up in Sussex, Osman started out in TV, where he created and co-hosted the gameshow Pointless. His forthcoming novel We Solve Murders – the start of a new series – features a writer billed as the world’s bestselling novelist, “if you don’t count Lee Child”. Child, the creator of former military police officer Jack Reacher, has enjoyed phenomenal popularity since he left his career – also in TV, where he worked on shows including Brideshead Revisited, The Jewel in the Crown and Cracker – and started writing, with his first novel published in 1997. Raised in Birmingham, he moved to the US in 1998 and now lives between Manhattan and rural Wyoming. He wrote 24 Reacher novels before announcing in 2020 that he would be handing the series to his brother Andrew.

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